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id Releases Open Source Wolfenstein 3D for the iPhone

Posted by Soulskill on from the ach-mein-leben dept.

An anonymous reader writes "id Software has released a port of the classic Wolfenstein FPS to the iPhone. Some of the coding was done by John Carmack himself, who also used original code combined with new code from Wolf3D Redux. The original code was open sourced years ago, and enthusiasts have been updating it, which made the port considerably easier for id. It's available in the iTunes App Store, but the source is available for free at id's website." Carmack also posted a detailed writeup about the decision to bring Wolf3D to the iPhone, including design notes and a few snippets of code. At the end, he says, "I'm going back to Rage for a while, but I do expect Classic Doom to come fairly soon for the iPhone." Kotaku got a chance to try the game at GDC: "It's not just a good reproduction of the original, it seems better."

45 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So when... by stonedcat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wolfenstein doesn't contain the BFG... you're thinking of Doom.

    --
    You can't take the sky from me.
  2. a new index by caffeinemessiah · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Plus 5 to the 'nostalgic games' index of computing power that is cheaply available.

    --
    An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
  3. Apple suckers drooling over decades-old ports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You guys always get shafted waiting for the ports.

  4. Wasn't that the.... by mark-t · · Score: 2, Insightful

    .... original FPS that started the whole trend?

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:Wasn't that the.... by Medgur · · Score: 4, Informative
      Not quite, the wikipedia article is quite thorough on the history

      The earliest two documented first person shooters were Maze War and Spasim. Maze War was the most similar to modern first person shooters, as it featured characters fighting on foot. Development of the game began some time in 1973 and was likely completed before Spasim, however its exact date of completion is unknown. Spasim had a documented debut at the University of Illinois in 1974. The game was a rudimentary space flight simulator, which featured a first-person perspective.[5] Spasim led to more detailed combat flight simulators and eventually to a tank simulator, developed for the U.S. army, in the later 1970s. These games were not available to consumers and it was not until 1980 that a tank game, Battlezone, was released in arcades. A version was released in 1983 for home computers, the first successful mass-market game featuring a first person viewpoint and 3D graphics.[27]

      Id Software released Hovertank 3D in 1991, which pioneered ray casting technology to enable faster gameplay than 1980s vehicle simulators. Later developers added texture mapping with Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (by Looking Glass Technologies), a role-playing game featuring a first person viewpoint and an advanced graphics engine, released in 1992. During development, this led to Catacomb 3-D which was actually released first, in late 1991, and introduced the display of the protagonist's hand and weapon (magical spells) on the screen.[27]

    2. Re:Wasn't that the.... by TJamieson · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Man, this 486/66 runs Doom so smoothly compared to my 33..."

      Yeah, I feel old too.

      --
      For the last time, PIN Number and ATM Machine are redundancies!
    3. Re:Wasn't that the.... by Enderandrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What really gets me is how Ultima Underworld never gets the credit it deserves. It shipped before Wolfenstein 3D, and was a better game to boot.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Underworld

      You could look up and down, you could jump, swim, examine objects, interact with objects, there were RPG stats, etc. Gameplay was non-linear, and there was even an honest-to-goodness story. Lighting was dynamic, and there was even auto-map.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Spector

      Spector never gets the respect he is due either.

      --
      http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
    4. Re:Wasn't that the.... by Zeio · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There was also a 486 DX 50, a fairly rare part which had a bus speed of 50MHz (not a DX2), and used to "OC" the VESA (VLB) local bus as well. This chip was seen in many EISA systems at the time and needed extra cooling.

      I had a buddy with a 486 DX50, and it was a fast system for the time, It was faster in a lot of ways than a 486DX2/66.

      The best was playing Wing Commander on these systems, it was way too fast :)

      --
      Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
    5. Re:Wasn't that the.... by cr_nucleus · · Score: 2, Informative

      What really gets me is how Ultima Underworld never gets the credit it deserves. It shipped before Wolfenstein 3D, and was a better game to boot.

      I think you're missing the point.

      Wolf 3D was about performance and fast paced action. If i remember correctly, ultima underworld wasn't exactly blazing fast.
      I remember playing wolf3D on a 386, and i seriously don't believe ultima underworld would have run correctly on this machine.

      Id was never about never done before stuff, it's all about technical achievement that allows action games that acually run fast.

      If you want to go the "me first" route, then you should talk about Corporation ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_(video_game) ) and Midi Maze ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Maze ). Corporation had some RPG components as well.

      I'm sure there are even more titles i don't know of.

    6. Re:Wasn't that the.... by MrSlayer · · Score: 2, Funny

      Also Wolf 3D had Nazis, everybody knows that Nazis makes movies and games better.

  5. Re:So when... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Funny

    When you kill enough dogs or turn the soldiers into dog food, an animal rights activist will beat you to death with your own iPhone. :P

  6. So what? by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doom already runs on Rockbox. If the iPhone were an open platform, this would have happened a long time ago.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    1. Re:So what? by onefriedrice · · Score: 2, Informative

      but unfortunately it seems that Iphonedot, er I mean, Slashdot only covers the Iphone....

      Your bitterness is juicy.

      However, lest anyone get the impression that this is a first for the iPhone, 3D apps have been available since the store itself was opened (and probably even before that). This article is not so much about the iPhone as it is about id Software and John Carmack, so you see, there's really no need to get all rabid.

      --
      This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
  7. Re:not free if you can't jailbreak by The+Warlock · · Score: 4, Informative

    The game engine is open-source, but the levels and art assets have always been non-free.

    --
    I've upped my standards, so up yours.
  8. Re:not free if you can't jailbreak by sokoban · · Score: 5, Funny

    God, I hate paying people for their work. It makes me feel so dirty and wrong.

    --
    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
  9. Re:So when... by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just install the PETArometer app on your iPhone. When a PETA member sneaks up on you, the iPhone emits the 'Call of the Flower Children'. You can then strangle the dirty hippie with your baby seal skin scarf.

  10. Re:Sweet by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    And also available for the iPod Touch:

    It is almost tempting to try to hijack the side volume switch for fire, but the ergonomics aren't quite right, and it would be very un-Apple-like, and wouldn't be available on the iPod touch (plus I couldn't figure out how...).

    --
    Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  11. Graphics quality by Mprx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The graphics are crisp, intense duplicates of the original.

    But from the screenshot we can see that both the sprites and the textures have been filtered. Filtering the textures is no problem, but the sprites are "pixel art" - they are designed around the pixel boundaries to pack more detail into a limited resolution. It's the same principle as manually hinting fonts. The only acceptable scaling method for pixel art is unfiltered "nearest neighbor" scaling, as used in the original game. This new version is not "crisp", it is an ugly blurred mess.

  12. Re:not free if you can't jailbreak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd be happy to pay to see Carmack do live performances.

  13. Re:Sweet by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    How do you install apps on the touch?

    Through the App Store?

    --
    Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  14. No FaceBall? by tepples · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not quite, the wikipedia article is quite thorough on the history

    But apparently not thorough enough to link to MIDI-Maze or FaceBall, one of the first multiplayer deathmatch FPS games. (I have to reply here because Slashdot has less of a "non-notability patrol" than Wikipedia.)

  15. Re:I welcome the competition! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just remember, you need a Mac "pro" model to develop. Have fun!

    not according to my $300 amd based hackintosh.

  16. why hasnt this been tagged johncisgod yet by Meshugga · · Score: 4, Informative

    - which would be the natural thing to do.

    i'm seriously losing faith in /. readers history education.

  17. Enlarging pixel art by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    The only acceptable scaling method for pixel art is unfiltered "nearest neighbor" scaling, as used in the original game.

    There exist algorithms for enlarging pixel art that overcome both the blocky appearance of nearest-neighbor resampling and the blurry appearance of linear resampling. The Scale2x algorithm, for instance, can be applied multiple times. The hq2x, hq3x, and hq4x can be applied only as the final step, but with amazing results.

    1. Re:Enlarging pixel art by Mprx · · Score: 3, Informative

      They sometimes work, but when they fail the results are more distracting than nearest neighbor resampling. The "Yoshi" sign in Test Case 2 is a good example, where the algorithm has failed to identify the gradually sloping line and exaggerated the stepped appearance.

    2. Re:Enlarging pixel art by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting
      John Carmack wrote:

      Unfortunately, an attempt at increasing the quality of the original art assets by using hq2x graphics scaling to turn the 64x64 art into better filtered 128x128 arts was causing lots of sprites to have fringes around them due to incorrect handling of alpha borders.

      Workaround 1: Use Scale2x instead.
      Workaround 2: Do the alpha with Scale2x and the red, green, and blue with hq2x on a copy of the image modified such that each transparent pixel duplicates the non-transparent pixel closest to it.

  18. Carmack Rocks! by jcr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    John Carmack has a very well-deserved reputation for generosity. A couple of years ago he gave one of his NeXT slabs to a friend of mine on a "free to good home" basis. He not only gave it to her, he paid for the shipping.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:Carmack Rocks! by ildon · · Score: 2, Funny

      From the linked article:

      I told EA that we were NOT going to ship that as the first Id Software product on the iPhone. Using the iPhone's hardware 3D acceleration was a requirement, and it should be easy -- when I did the second generation mobile renderer (written originally in java) it was layered on top of a class I named TinyGL that did the transform / clip / rasterize operations fairly close to OpenGL semantics, but in fixed point and with both horizontal and vertical rasterization options for perspective correction. The developers came back and said it would take two months and exceed their budget.

      Rather than having a big confrontation over the issue, I told them to just send the project to me and I would do it myself.

      Carmack is such a bad ass. "You guys are morons. I'll code this myself."

    2. Re:Carmack Rocks! by sessamoid · · Score: 2, Interesting

      From the linked article:

      I told EA that we were NOT going to ship that as the first Id Software product on the iPhone. Using the iPhone's hardware 3D acceleration was a requirement, and it should be easy -- when I did the second generation mobile renderer (written originally in java) it was layered on top of a class I named TinyGL that did the transform / clip / rasterize operations fairly close to OpenGL semantics, but in fixed point and with both horizontal and vertical rasterization options for perspective correction. The developers came back and said it would take two months and exceed their budget.

      Rather than having a big confrontation over the issue, I told them to just send the project to me and I would do it myself.

      Carmack is such a bad ass. "You guys are morons. I'll code this myself."

      Rather than having a big confrontation over the issue, I told them to just send the project to me and I would do it myself. Cass Everitt had been doing some personal work on the iPhone, so he helped me get everything set up for local iPhone development here, which is a lot more tortuous than you would expect from an Apple product. As usual, my off the cuff estimate of "Two days!" was optimistic, but I did get it done in four, and the game is definitely more pleasant at 8x the frame rate.

      Not only that, but what the dev team estimated would take them at least 2 months, Carmack did in four days.

      --
      "No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
    3. Re:Carmack Rocks! by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 3, Funny

      Not only that, but what the dev team estimated would take them at least 2 months, Carmack did in four days.

      And on the fifth, sixth, and seventh days, He rested.

  19. Finally... by Bieeanda · · Score: 2, Funny

    The iPhone gets a killer app!

  20. Re:not free if you can't jailbreak by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 3, Informative

    I suspected as much but when I checked out the zip, it's actually got all the level data there.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  21. Re:Sweet by X0563511 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What's more sweet? Something that pushes the hardware a bit more.

    http://www.x-plane.com/iPhone/iPhone.html

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  22. I think the Wolf3D Redux guy made a big mistake... by 7+digits · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...by not forwarding his email to his current address.

    "I sent an email to the Wolf 3D Redux project maintainer to see if he might be interested in working on an iPhone project with us, but it had been over a year since the last update, and he must have moved on to other things."

    He'll probably learn about the missed opportunity by reading slashdot...

  23. Re:I think the Wolf3D Redux guy made a big mistake by Paralizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I thought the same thing. If he's still a developer, he really missed a huge opportunity. On the other hand, he can still say that some of his work was used in a commercial game for the iPhone, selected by Carmack himself, which is a pretty cool thing to be able to put on your resume.

  24. aarrrggghhhhh by Eil · · Score: 4, Informative

    From Carmack's TFA:

    I sent an email to the Wolf 3D Redux project maintainer to see if he might be interested in working on an iPhone project with us, but it had been over a year since the last update, and he must have moved on to other things. I thought about it a bit, and decided that I would go ahead and do the project myself.

    Can you imagine doing a simple port of a trivial (but classic) game that nearly everyone has forgotten about and then missing that one email from John Effing Carmack himself saying, "hey, want to work with me on this?"

    Somewhere there is a developer kicking himself HARD for not checking his sourceforge email account.

    1. Re:aarrrggghhhhh by cerberusss · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Somewhere there is a developer kicking himself HARD for not checking his sourceforge email account.

      This doesn't just happen to Carmack. I've found and logged bugs on SourceForge, then wrote e-mails to developers asking whether they'd consider fixing it for a fee. Never got a reply.

      --
      8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
  25. Re:Sweet by indi0144 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When theres no Apple Store in your country? (that's like 90% of the globe). Not trolling I really would like to know. Proxy? gift cards? some hack?

  26. Re:Sweet by Em+Ellel · · Score: 3, Informative

    When theres no Apple Store in your country? (that's like 90% of the globe). Not trolling I really would like to know. Proxy? gift cards? some hack?

    JailBreak your phone, then either install apps manually or use one of the number of AppStore alternative Installers (Cydia comes to mind)

    -Em

    --
    RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
  27. Re:So when... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Or beat him with the club you used to kill the baby seal

    Just club him with the baby seal. It has a little more zest to it.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  28. Also available in Cydia for free by modemboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The shareware version is also available via Cydia for people with jailbroken phones.
    Exact same code, it just only has the first mission instead of all six, but no cost...
    Details: http://www.modmyi.com/forums/iphone-news/542821-wolfenstein-3d-5-app-store-0-cydia-exact-same-game-legal.html

  29. Re:$5 in the App Store, FREE from Cydia by Mr+Stubby · · Score: 2, Insightful

    To thank the maker for his work? This wasn't just a dirty port with an almost unusable interface like quake etc (last time i tried it it may have improved). Some work actually went into making it playable, the configurable interface and sensitivy lets you get it working just right for your style and it actually plays quite well. I've got no problems giving JC some pocket change for not just bringing the game to the iphone but actually making it fun/easy to play.

  30. Re:So when... by houghi · · Score: 4, Funny

    reminds me of the joke "Seal walks into a club."

    Also what is it with these Peta campaigns? If I wear fur, they will keep showing naked ladies? Sounds counterproductive to me.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  31. Re:So when... by lxs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    IIRC there were plenty of Bad Fascist Gunners in Wolfenstein.

  32. Re:not free if you can't jailbreak by Blackdognight · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Come on people. Pay the $5. This is the exactly kind of behavior we keep asking for! They're releasing the source and not treating us like we're all thieves. Let's reward them for giving us the benefit of the doubt.

    Besides, if you could afford to buy yourself an iPhone or iPod touch, you can likely afford it. (Especially considering what ATT charges for data packages.)